“Scott John Hutchison was our son, brother and friend. He was best known to most as the lead singer and songwriter in the band Frightened Rabbit. Through his music and art Scott made tiny changes that had a big impact. His honesty and openness about his own mental health inspired people from all walks of life. In May 2018, at the age of 36, Scott died by suicide.
Losing someone you love to suicide is one of the hardest things that can happen to a family. The fallout is indescribable and the sense of loss lives with you forever. Yet, strangely, amidst the emotional turmoil of the days and weeks following Scott’s death, we had an overriding feeling that something had to be done. We wanted to ensure that people no longer saw this as the only answer, or, better still, that there should be support in place to help with mental health challenges in the first place. Scott was always honest about his own struggles and we felt sure he would want us to use his voice to make a difference.
We had no idea how we would do this. ‘tiny changes’ were just words in a much loved song that fans of the band would all belt out at gigs but, little by little, our ideas took form and Tiny Changes was born.
We chose to focus on children and young people, in the firm belief that it’s the right of every child to have good mental health and the opportunity to lead happy and fulfilled lives as adults.
With our own personal experience of mental health as our starting point, we set out to build up our understanding of the underlying issues, talking and listening to people ‘in the know’, and soaking up their knowledge and expertise. We discovered that there were so many gaps in the support and recovery of children and young people in the mental health space, and we started to look at how we could help foster change.
The Tiny Changes family is growing all the time. We are creating worthwhile projects from money raised, we are asking people to tell their stories as we have told ours, and we are pushing the boundaries to raise awareness of what needs to be done to make things better.
Together, we are making a difference. Together, we’ll make tiny changes to earth.”
